Let’s face it. 2011 has been one of the most eventful years to date. It’s been a time of numerous uprisings, protests and upheavals. But what’s really interesting and different about uprisings today is that individuals are starting their own movements in a bid to change the world for the better.

In fact, no period in history has seen so much ‘power to the people’. Each protest, each revolution, and each rebellion – they’ve all triggered by individuals who start new uprisings for a purpose, advocating for a brand or against state oppression, corruption, consumerism, inequality and police brutality.

Now technology and social media create the reach of the movements. But they are just a part of the movement infrastructure, the media channel (albeit much cooler than TV). Social media doesn't supersede Movements. Your own movement needs social media, but more than that it needs a higher purpose.

TIME magazine agrees. It recently revealed the collective ‘protestor’ as its ‘Person of the Year’ for 2011, citing the change brought about by street demonstrations from New York and Spain to the Middle East.

The shared honor is usually handed out to individuals with last year’s winner being Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. But given the international focus on this year’s protest movements, TIME felt it was worthy to give ‘the protestor’ a special mention. The meaning behind this is undoubtedly hinting at individual people power being the main theme of the past 12 months.

But why has 2011 been such a year of unrest?

Part of the answer can be attributed to the ever-growing global economic crisis. People are fed up with the financial meltdown and want to see positive change. Financial issues in America are affecting nations elsewhere. We’re all suffering in some way or another.

TIME’s top editor Rick Stengel said in a statement published last week: “Everywhere, it seems, people said they’d had enough… They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. They literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change. And although it was understood differently in different places, the idea of democracy was present in every gathering.”